


umbrella

by magesamell



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Dating, F/M, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 19:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14552097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magesamell/pseuds/magesamell
Summary: Chat Noir kisses Ladybug’s fingertips, and the girl behind the mask only sighs and pushes him away because she knows it's easy to love a superhero, but hard to love a human being.





	umbrella

**Author's Note:**

> hmm, you say I already have like 5 fics about Ladybug falling in love with Chat Noir? You are like a little baby. Watch this.

She tells Alya very certainly one day: “I am going to marry Adrien Agreste and we will have two dogs and a hamster.”

Alya laughs and says: “Girl, everyone knows you're a cat person.”

Marinette vehemently denies this; reiterates the fact she will marry a supermodel and have two dogs and a hamster.

“Your cat would eat the hamster.” 

-o-

It would be a lie to say she didn't see it coming. It would be a lie to say he charmed her while she wasn't looking, that falling in love with him is an accident or a mistake.

Ladybug hates lies.

The truth is this: she falls in love with her eyes wide open and her heart shuttered and guarded. She tells herself: I am not in love.

Chat Noir kisses Ladybug’s fingertips, and the girl behind the mask only sighs and pushes him away because she knows it's easy to love a superhero, but hard to love a human being.

She reminds herself: I am not in love.

-o-

Marinette knows what being in love means. She’s known love her whole life, and she’s loved her whole life.

Love is piping icing on birthday cakes and washing up the dishes after her  _maman_ cooks and _papa_ folding her mother’s underwear and Alya knowing exactly what cabinet of her kitchen has the glasses, and the plates, and which drawer has the silverware.

Love is in the everyday touches, and she knows she loves Adrien, or is beginning to love Adrien – she knows it in the quiet patter of her heart and the beating insistence of her attention. She’s stitched her name into a blue scarf, and she knows what that means.

It’s how human beings love human beings. And even if _he_ doesn’t know, she’ll remember.

-o-

“A facemask,” Ladybug says finally.

Chat Noir frowns, tapping his claws against the metal of the gutter. “So–”

“So like I transformed without even thinking. And it – like, it wasn’t on my face when I transformed. The normal mask was. The one not made of essential oils and shit. So, like, I forgot about it. But _then_...when I got home…”

She shudders.

“It was like....super glue. Or mold. Like, it had made its home on my face and was part of me, now.”

She watches Chat smile, sort of giggle. “Two face towels gave their lives that day,” she says.

At that he throws back his head and laughs.

“Well, what about you?” Ladybug asks.

“Oh, well, you know. Half the time an akuma comes when I’m already late getting somewhere. And when I finally do get back everyone’s up my ass about it.”

She knows that feeling. That,  _oh you_ , thing, where everyone laughs how scatterbrained and all over the place you are. It’s embarrassing, but not fatal. Certainly not as bad as everyone knowing. But the constant lying of secret identities takes a toll on your reputation.

“One time,” Chat says seriously, “I had to leave the queue in a bakery...”

Ladybug slaps a palm on her chest, clutching imaginary pearls.

“ _After_ I paid,” he continues darkly.

She gasps.

“And I didn’t even get the croissant.”

“ _Mon dieu!”_ she exclaims, and pretends to faint, knocking his shoulders with her own.

She feels his shoulder jump and shudder with laughter, and she’s laughing too.

And – like a piercing, horrid strike of lighting, like overhead fluorescents strobing on after hours of the cool dark, like the sunset’s searing rays refracting into her eyes as she sits in the passenger seat of a car on the highway – she thinks –

_Chat would love Papa’s croissants._

and then

_I should give–_

And then she feels his arm pressed up all against hers, feels his smile at her temple, feels the wavering weight of her position – and recognizes that comfortable certainty in this, in them, the  _safety_ of it all. 

Ladybug sits straight up and bids her partner goodnight.

-o-

It sucks to love a superhero.

You can’t go out for gelato. You can’t do homework together. You can’t text them at 1 am or tag them in a post on Facebook.

You can’t be honest with them. Not about everything. Not about the most important bits, like who you are and what your MechaStrike III gamertag is and your father’s croissants.

On the other hand, if you have an earth-shattering realization, they can’t follow you home and ask you about it. No one looks twice at a superhero running through the skyline.

-o- 

If she tries very hard, she could pretend he doesn’t exist.

“I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she says, “and I have nothing to do with Chat Noir.” She looks about her room expectantly, and frowns when she sees the Chat doll on her sette.

Bugger.

“It’s okay to like Chat Noir,” Tikki says, fluttering by her ear. “You’re partners.”

“That’s not – really what I’m worried about,” Marinette says.

“Then what are you worried about?”

She’s worried about her parents poking their heads through her trapdoor and finding her gone. She’s worried about her attendance grade at _lycee_. She’s worried about the thousand and one excuses she makes each week, and her freelance detective of a best friend. She’s worried she’ll never find a place to breathe, to relax and just drop all of these versions of herself, Marinettes who were turned into knights and Marinettes who had to return a library book and Marinettes who just overslept, could you believe it?

She’s worried she’s already found that place and she’s worried she hasn’t found herself, the Marinette who is also Ladybug who is also Marinette, the one that has no excuses, has no disguise.

How does a superhero ‘be herself,’ anyway?

-o-

She ices the sugar cookies pink and red like roses for the pool party. If it were her birthday, she would have thought the gesture a tad trite, but Marinette knows for a fact that Rose loves nothing more than pink, perfume, and her namesake. Alya declares the cookies too adorable for this world, and takes a picture with Marinette’s phone for Instagram.

“Shit,” Nino swears when they meet up with him and Adrien. “I didn’t get her anything.” They stand on the steps of the school, and Marinette squints, disliking the direct sunlight. Her palms sweat on the coated cardboard of the box.

“You didn’t have to,” Alya says just as Marinette explains: “I made these special.”

“Rose asked if I could make her favorite,” Marinette finishes.

“Ohh,” Nino says, peering through the plastic window. “They look dope, Mari.”

Adrien looks too. “They’re beautiful,” he tells her with a tiny smile, and Marinette nods, says nothing, doesn’t trust herself to say anything coherent.

Later, as she watches Adrien defend himself fruitlessly against Nino’s splashing assault, she tells Alya: “I think I’ll name the hamster Hugo, actually.”

-o-

Patrol ends with a cat-and-bug tag game, and he wins by tackling her mid-air. They land rolling on a roof, and then she’s on her back, staring at the stars with his head on her stomach.

“Sorry for splitting the other night.” She says it between breaths, her throat tight. Time was, the thought of apologizing to Chat for a hasty departure wouldn’t have even crossed her mind. They were strangers, after all.

But they weren’t strangers any more.

Chat lifts his head from her stomach to flash her a toothy grin. “Did you leave the oven on?”

It would be so easy to say _yes,_ to weave a story of burnt bread, smoking crust, curtains she had to wash three times to get the smell out. How the hell do you even apologize for something like this anyway?

The problem – the _problem_ is that she’s never gonna own up to anything. Not when she always has an out. There’s no accountability, not like this. She could hide behind her mask forever, pretend forever that he’s not someone she –

“Not the oven,” Ladybug says, “the _sink_.”

-o-

She spends the night scrolling through the **#ladybug** tag on every social media app she has on her phone. She lies there for hours, lit by the light of her phone, wishing she could sink into her comforter and spontaneously suffocate.

Something about the genuine enthusiasm of Ladybug fans makes Marinette feel existential guilt, and something about the inevitable internet hate gives her vicious satisfaction.

What kind of superhero always runs away?

-o-

“No point,” Chat says, eyes fixed on his baton, and Ladybug deflates, her victorious pose dropping like a stone.

“ _What?”_ Paris’ heroine shrieks. “I touched all the gargoyles.” She throws back her hand, gesturing forcefully at the cathedral behind her.

Chat Noir shakes his head mournfully. “Sure. However, if you recall your _additional_ challenge was to remain airborne _sans_ yo-yo for three seconds–” and he turns his baton towards her. A green screen blinks at her.

**_00:02:87:96 seconds_ **

He pulls away the timer too quick, and her vision swims with his neon eyes. “Too bad. You were _this_ close,” he laments, pinching his claws together.

She swats his hand out of her face. “Don’t patronize me. You couldn’t get that much air anyway.”

“I don’t know.” He taps his chin with one claw. “I _can_ jump pretty high.”

“Yeah, so can I! So can volleyball players. So can my _mamon_ when she needs to reach the top shelf.” Ladybug crosses her arms. “You’re not special, Chat.”

He grins at her. “Three seconds?”

For a moment she just glares at him. His grin only widens. Finally she flips open her yo-yo, navigates to the timer. “Three seconds. No baton. Starting–” she points at the pavement, four stories below them, across the street at the alleyway opposite them. “There.”

Chat nods, neon bobbing, winks, lights blinking – and then in a dark flash he’s gone, flipped over the edge of the rooftop. Ladybug watches him land on the sidewalk, feet touching the pavement just long enough to launch himself in the air again. Then he execute a series of wall-jumps, flipping back and forth between the sides of the buildings, hovering over the alleyway like an insect. On the final jump he pushes off the edge of the roof with his hands – she pushes the spot on her yo-yo – and Chat Noir sails over the street in high, gravity-defying arc.

Like some sort of magical superhero or something.

He lands – her thumb pushes down – in front of her with a flourish. She’s just about to giggle at him when she glances down.

**_00:03:01:89 seconds_ **

Ladybug groans, shoving her yo-yo in his hands without comment. To her great dismay, he hoots just as loudly as Kim and Alix do after a victory.

“Yeah, _whatever_ ,” she says, “You stole that move from Super Mario.”

“Well, duh!”

Something about his unapologetic sincerity makes her double over laughing.

-o-

Marinette is running – oh – twenty minutes late to when she said she would meet her friends, but she’s pretty sure Alya already knows her order. God willing, she’ll have hot food waiting for her as soon as she turns this corner. Good thing, too, because she had to skip lunch for the akuma.

The bell jingles when she pushes to the door in, and she looks around the restaurant for two frantic moments before spotting the back of Adrien’s blonde head next to Nino’s red cap.

“Took you long enough!” Alya exclaims, waving her over.

Marinette side steps a waiter, bumping into another patron. “Sorry – _sorry_ – the bus got caught in traffic,” she explains as she slides into the boothe next to Alya, trying not to pant.

“You took the  _bus_ here?”

“I was on the other side of town. Sketching.” Marinette unwinds her scarf, hoping dearly Alya will drop the line of questioning before noticing she wasn’t exactly carrying a bag large enough for her sketchpad.

“I heard it was backed up for a whole kilometer,” says Nino.

“Yeah!” Alya interrupts. “The akuma battle was in the actual street! I wasn’t there – obviously, but on Twitter I saw this video–”

“Have you guys ordered yet?” Marinette asks. Her stomach was queasy – like it always felt when she went too long without eating, or jumped around the city excessively between meals.

“Yeah yeah, I got your fried rice. Anyways, apparently the akuma could turn anything it touched into solid gold.” Alya looks around the table expectantly.

“Wow,” says Adrien.

Marinette bit down on her sigh, instead smiling at Alya, praying this akuma conversation would be ending as quickly as food would be arriving. She sometimes got sick of talking about superheroes, especially when she literally had _just_ been there and didn’t exactly need a recap.

Alya slurped her soda, oblivious to Marinette’s annoyance. “Yeah, he transmuted a bunch of cars and a stoplight and even a couple _people_ , including Chat Noir.”

" _Again_? That guy is always getting possessed or trapped or some shit.”

Marinette glares at Nino. “He’s not ‘ _always getting possessed_.’” She flings up her hands, forming air quotes around the words.

“Well, whatever, but it’s still impressive Ladybug doesn’t need him to purify the akuma.”

“Sure she does!”

“They’re partners, Nino,” interjects Alya.

“Exactly!” Marinette says. “Thank you!”

Just then their waitress arrives with their food, and begins passing it out.

“I’m just saying, the guy screws up a _lot_ compared to Ladybug,” says Nino, taking his plate from the waitress.

“Oh, are you guys talking about the akuma?” The waitress lit up, setting down her serving tray on the edge of the table. “Can you believe Ladybug’s sidekick got possessed _again!”_

All of the breath in Marinette’s lungs rushes out in an agitated huff. She turns in her seat to fix this lady with her best glare. “He’s not a _sidekick_. Chat Noir is – I mean he’s probably the person Ladybug trusts the most.” She swerves in her seat to get confirmation from Alya, whose mouth is hanging open. Swiveling back, Marinette continues: “They are _partners_ , whose powers perfectly balance each other out. Half of Ladybug’s stunts wouldn’t work at all without him, so jot that down.” She points at the waitress’s’ pad, before realizing exactly what she’s doing. She retracts the hand quickly, placing it in her lap. “Sorry.” She stares down at her bunched fists, feeling her face burn.

_Idiot. Why would tell off a civilian for no fucking reason. Idiot!!!_

“Wow,” says Adrien. Marinette looks at him, and he’s turned to the waitress, chuckling. “Sorry about our friend. She’s a major Chat Noir fan.” He flashes Marinette a teasing smile. She feels herself go unmercifully redder.

The waitress laughs too. “That’s alright. I’m a big Ladybug fan, if you couldn’t tell.” And with that the poor lady finishes handing out their food in total silence.

The moment the waitress leaves the table erupts in nervous laughter.

“What the hell was _that_?” whisper-shrieks Alya, prodding Marinette with her elbow.

“Can’t explain, too hungry,” Marinette says, unwrapping her chopsticks.

“I didn’t know you liked Chat Noir that much, Mari,” remarks Nino.

She sighs. “So defending him now means I must really like him, huh?” She sips her lemonade. “I was just–” she gesticulates incoherently  “–correcting that lady on the facts. He’s really _not_ her sidekick.”

“But it is true that Ladybug is amazing,” says Adrien. “I mean, she purifies all those akumas without – her partner. It’s even more impressive knowing that they _are_ partners. Saving the day without your sidekick is one thing, but saving the day without your other half is–” Adrien pauses, seems to realize they are _all_ staring at him. “Well that’s something else, huh?”

Marinette’s first response is to blush. She feels exposed, in this restaurant, hearing Adrien praise her. Genuine. Unselfconscious. She feels exposed and like the room is too loud and she’s too in the middle of it.

“Ladybug _is_ perfect,” Alya enthuses through a mouthful of chicken. “And gorgeous!”

Adrien laughs – and – _blushes_. “Of course she is.” Nino murmurs his agreement as well.

And her nerves are racing – not in a good way. Like her brain is overheating way. Like dread, tough to swallow and caught her in her neck, her throat. Marinette stares at her plate, absolutely sure the walls are closing in.

She feels – disappointed. She doesn’t know why she feels disappointed.

“Anyways, apparently a bunch of people took a pickaxe to the golden pavement and steal but it just turned back to normal after Healing Charm.”

“Dummies,” tsks Nino.

-o-

“I must be broken,” Marinette tells Tikki. “Adrien says to my face that he likes me and I just – freak out. Not in fun – _ooh, lovely butterflies!_ –  but like  _oh god_ I have a chemistry exam tomorrow.”

Her room is dusky. Sunlight flickers and filters through the skylight. She curls up onto her side and faces the wall.

“Well, he said it about Ladybug.”

“Yeah,” says Marinette.

Tikki swerves in front of her face. “Marinette, you _are_ Ladybug.”

“I know.” She closes her eyes in exhaustion.

“If he likes Ladybug, he’ll like Marinette too, if you give him the chance to get to know you.”

Her stomach churns unpleasantly at the thought of Adrien ‘ _getting to know her_.’

She sits up straight in bed. “Tikki. I think I have commitment issues.”

-o-

It’s not her fault if she does. Her life is so chaotic. Like, she lies to her closest loved ones all the time. And it feels terrible to do that to just her parents and Alya. Adding a fourth person into the mix would be – awful.

She hates lying like that. It feels lonely. And disappointing.

-o-

Ladybug starts and stops several times. She knows Chat has been suspecting her all patrol, knows that he has been patiently waiting for her to explain why she was so bothered.

It takes her until the end of the night, until they are perched on their favorite rooftop, for her to summon up the courage to ask him.

“Do you ever feel...guilty?” Ladybug says slowly, tapping her fingers on the concrete eave of the roof. “Like, about no one knowing?” She clarifies, tipping her head to look at him.

Chat Noir blinks at her. “About the superhero thing?”

“Well, yeah,” she bites down, feeling ridiculous. She tries again. “I – the – I’m, I’m _always_ lying to my parents about where I am.”

Chat moves in her peripheral vision. “Sounds like a pretty normal teenage thing to do,” he says. “So I’ve heard, anyway.”

Ladybug pushes her hair behind her ear. “I don’t...like lying to them. I hate – keeping this secret. Like, it’s totally not fair they don’t know where their only kid is. Like, that’s messed up.”

Chat is quiet for many moments. “My dad always wants to know where I am. When I get to be out here – he doesn’t get to know. I don’t know. I like it.”

Ladybug doesn’t know what to say. This piece of information makes her insanely curious. But she can’t find the right words, the polite ones – and so maybe all that falls out of her mouth is 

“Why?”

“Well, when I’m transformed – I’m just gone. Missing. My dad would notice but wouldn’t be able to find me if he tried.” He pauses. “I don’t even know if I even want him to notice. But if he did I’d be gone and he couldn’t find me. That’s….kind of messed up too, isn’t it?”

She scooches close to him, placing her hand on his. “I think we all want to be noticed.”

Chat Noir stares at their hands, and in the dark she can’t quite tell what his looks like. He’s quiet for a second too long, and then he says, in a exaggerated, put-upon voice: “I’ve certainly noticed _you_.”

Ladybug laughs. Decides to give him this one. “Yeah? What’s the final judgement?”

He takes her hand and his, turning. Chat’s grin softens, and he’s looking into her eyes. “You are...amazing.”

_Amazing._

She feels the word across her face, she feels it purple in her stomach, feels it flush her whole body with anxious energy.

“You’re amazing too,” she says. “And very silly.” She tilts her face toward his. “But mostly amazing.”

He smiles at her, and she’s smiling, and they’re just cheesing at each other like a couple of cheesing super heroes.

And her hand flexes and she shifts so they that they’re holding hands.

“Wow. I can’t believe we said like, multiple real things in a row.” She says, laughing, looking at their entwined hands.

“Yeah. I’m proud of us.”

And she wants to say something else. She wants to say: I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad it’s you who is here with me, who called me amazing and let me call him amazing and wins parkour competitions and trash talks pineapple on pizza and told me to be kinder to Lila.

But she doesn’t say that. Because that’s too real, too bounding around loud in her head, and she’s not like him – she needs time to figure out what that feeling means. But it resonates so strong that she feels like he could read it on her face.

She wishes he knew, and she wishes he didn’t. And when she looks at him she can’t tell if he knows it or not, and that’s her fault, probably. Her fault, definitely.

-o-

The problem is, no one is going to marry a supermodel and have two dogs and a hamster. As aspirations go, it is low risk. It's never gonna happen. No need to worry about rejection.

Because the _real_ first step in marrying anyone is falling in love with your best friend, and Marinette knows she's heading into uncharted territory here. This is real. Like, _really_ real. Like if she messes it up it could mess _them_ up.

But even at her most insecure and awkward, Marinette’s never been a coward.

And so she takes down the Agreste posters, plucks out Adrien’s face from her picture frames and all the crevices of her bedroom.

It's time to grow up, she thinks.

-o-

“Do you want to see a movie?”

Chat turns to look at her and blinks. “ _What?_ ”

“A movie. We can dress up in sweats and scarves and go see a movie together.” She brushes imaginary dirt off her shoulder with great intent. “I'm buying, if that convinces you.”

“Like...a date?”

Ladybug sighs. “No, it's a work event between two superhero colleagues.”

Chat hesitates. Then, mischievously: “So it _is_ a date.”

Ladybug turns her nose in the air. “Only if you say yes.”

“Of course I'm saying yes.”

She feels a smile break upon her face and wonders if he noticed it too.

-o-

The evening is a series of arguments. First, how and when and where would be the best time for two renowned superheroes to crash the cinema with the least amount of fanfare. There’s a brief spat on whether they should try to blend in or find a smaller, intimate theatre where they could, to be delicate, shamelessly bribe a former akumatized cinema employee to arrange a private theatre. After they decide on the latter, there follows a long heated disagreement on what to watch. Ladybug refuses to see the newest superhero flick because of the cliche and Chat vanguards the title for that very reason. They compromise on a different action film, but heatedly debate snacks and who pays for what and which trailer preview was most interesting.

The last argument rears its head long after the movie, after another hour and a half of chatting aimlessly on Paris’ rooftops, when Chat Noir leans in to kiss her goodnight.

In a sheer, embarrassed, panicked reflex – Ladybug steps backs, laughing uncomfortably. She watches him deflate like a balloon.

She stops laughing.

“I’m sorry.” And before he can respond, she rushes on and says: “No, I’m really sorry. That wasn’t – I really had a wonderful night. I really enjoyed myself.”

He shoots her a pleased glance. “Me, too.”

“But do you really want to kiss a stranger?” It bursts out of her, unwelcome, sputtering up and sounding so embarrassingly insecure. She hasn’t been this agonized in front of him since – Stoneheart, probably. When she didn’t even know him.

Now, Chat laughs – and it doesn’t exactly make her feel any better. “You're not a stranger,” he says.

“But–”

“Why are you so convinced I won't like you?” He says that with real exasperation. Takes her hand. “I adore you, my lady.” And very, very quietly: “You can't convince me otherwise.”

She sniffs, tries to blink away her tears before they fall. “But what if you don’t, huh?” She squeezes his hand. “What do I do then? What do we do then?”

Chat drops her hands, wraps his arms around her – and she melts, lets him cradles her head, lets him guide her chin to his shoulder. “You’re scared,” he says slowly. She makes a noise of confirmation. “The thing is, _buginette_. This is – this is it. Whatever happens, we’re working through it together. We’re always gonna be partners. We’re never gonna stop being partners. I _promise_ you.”

For a few moments, all she does is breathe, feels the cool night air on her wet cheeks. “Thank you,” she says finally, and turns her head. Presses her closed lips to his neck.

-o-

Dating a superhero is weird.

Existentially terrifying. But – comforting, too, somehow.

Marinette kicks herself for not knowing the obvious truth that if Ladybug and Chat Noir did anything – they worked together, faced any challenge head-on. Together.

And Marinette knows, because Marinette’s known her whole life, that _that’s_ precisely how human beings love human beings.

-o-

She cards her fingers through his hair. “You really need a ponytail,” Ladybug says.

He peeps one eye open, and then looks like he’s about to say something, then fixes his gaze on a point behind her ear.

“Hey _buginette,_  you know how you're always saying how cute it would be if we had matching suits?”

“I have never said that in my life.”

But he's already pushing himself off from her lap and twisting so he still faces her. He pokes one pigtail with a claw. “If you give me a hair tie,” he says, “we can _match_.”

Ladybug laughs. Instantly. And when her eyes un-squint she's still smiling and she says: “Okay.”

Her gloved fingers go up to one pigtail and her hair falls. She offers it to him and he snatches it eagerly, somewhat hesitantly but not inexpertly tying his hair back.

“Cute.” Ladybug judges.

Chat beams at her. “Your turn, _buginette_.”

Oh. She had forgotten. Her hair was still awkwardly half up and half down, with only one pigtail. She takes the tie, pulls it free and then pulls her hair, fastens it up in the same high pony Chat did.

He smiles at her, broad but quiet and Ladybug curses all the times she thought he was loud and fleeting because she knows now, that there was nothing fleeting about the way they flew in the air, and the brief kisses to her finger tips. She hopes she's learned to listen to more people than just her head now. She's hopes he'll keep helping her with that.

She doesn't realize how close she's gotten to him until she can hear his breath stutter. She pulls back just enough to see him, see his eyes.

“Can I–” she starts but he says _yes_ , and so she does. Her lips brush his and he has to catch himself from falling the way he leans in too, and he steadies himself by grabbing her hip, bearing down.

“You're gonna make me fall over,” she complains.

His hand kind of falters by her ear, and he ends up grasping her shoulder. She giggles: “What was that?”

“In my dreams you always had pigtails I could lovingly embrace.”

That makes her laugh for a good three seconds.

“Well, _chaton_ , now you know you're not dreaming.”

-o-

The kissing ends when Chat Noir dares Ladybug to a race up the Eiffel, and she agrees because she loves nothing more than flying with him in the sky, but he interrupts his own countdown to leap into an unfair headstart, and she _shrieks_ you cheating mangy _stray!_

She doesn’t stop yelling at him even after she beats him – because unsportsmanship is a great sin, and he laughs and laughs and says: “You love me anyway.”

And it’s not a question, but it _is_ a question. It’s _always_ a question when looks at her with that apprehensive eagerness. And she knows why he asks, knows it like the sour knock of her own failures and fears, but she can’t help be exasperated.

He already knows the answer. She’s already said it to him.

She loves him – (she **loves** him, _she loves him_ )

-o-

_because when the sun shines_

_we shine **together**_

_you'd know I'll be here_ _forever_

_said I'll always be your friend_

_took a oath, and_

_I'm sticking out to the end_

_now that it's **raining**_ _more than ever_

_know that we'll still have each other_

_you can stand under my_ _umbrella_

_you can stand under my_

**_umbrella_ **


End file.
